Below I offer a call for submissions for a panel at the annual conferenceof the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Richmond,Virginia, March 26-29, 2009.

The long eighteenth century, caught as it was in a process of culturalsecularization, saw a series of changes in the connection betweenaesthetics and the figure of ineffability. In France, the je ne sais quoi,made visible by Corneille, Bouhours, and others, and the Longinian sublime,made popular by Boileau, facilitate a history of the connection betweendevelopments in poetics and the role of figures of ineffability (e.g.Richard Scholar's recent work). But in England, despite the popularity ofBoilevian-Longinian sublimity, ineffability was at best a figure thatworked as a basis for aesthetics without being named. Whether it is aproduct of protestant iconoclasm or English skepticism, ineffability beforethe rise of romantic "genius" was an uncertainly articulatedphenomenonâ€"present in many theories of aesthetics and poetics, but alwaysobscured, never allowed to become explicit, and uncertainly related to theaesthetic subject. Was ineffability a kind of secret or silence, a form ofresistance within the "explicitation" and theorization of aesthetics? Thispanel will showcase work that examines the varying roles of ineffability asa figure in English aesthetics during the course of the century, offeringan opportunity for the expansion of historical research on thepre-Romantic, pre-Kantian understanding of literature that in significantways could not yet speak its own name.

Electronic versions of abstracts are preferable, and should be submitted towpknight_at_duke.edu by September 15th, 2008. If necessary, paper copies maybe mailed to William Knight. 1413B North Mangum St., Durham, NC, 27701.

As usual, please include any details for audio-visual needs, as well as allpertinent contact information.